Debate on the Address

I am grateful, Mr. Speaker. Common sense is needed to complement the co-operative approach that is at the heart of crime reduction partnerships, in order to deliver the genuine and long-held determination of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister to be tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime. The new challenge is e-crime. The UK has led the way in cutting dramatically the child abuse sites hosted in this country, through a co-operative approach involving business, police, children’s charities and Government. We now need a fresh approach to e-crime in general, and I urge the Prime Minister to use the expertise among Members of Parliament as a resource to tackle those issues. The other side of that coin is information. I hope that both my right hon. Friends the Prime Minister and the Chancellor will accelerate the work of Directgov, which is now seen internationally as a model. People do not seek information in departmental silos, and we can go further, linking in the Starthere model to create a single democratic access point to information from Government, local services and the third sector, even for the digitally challenged. That sort of co-operation is essential to promote civil society. I am confident that the Government are on the right lines, and that I am pushing at an open door. I welcome the Chancellor’s commitment to exploring the potential of co-operation and the wider third sector, ahead of the spending review. An excellent Treasury team is pursuing those issues. The real challenge is to embed an understanding of the third sector in the warp and weave of the whole Government machine. That is why I applaud the Prime Minister’s decision to create the Office of the Third Sector. The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster, North (Edward Miliband) has made a great start. He has shown respect to the independence of the third sector, and the sector has responded. I chair the Third Sector Network, which has brought together umbrella organisations from across social enterprise, voluntary and community organisations, trusts and the co-operative movement to work to identify common values. That builds on the pioneering work launched by the Prime Minister back in 1994. All those umbrella organisations will now have to carry back the debate to their memberships across the country. I am proud of what the Government have achieved. Working for this Prime Minister has been a privilege. The Queen’s Speech shows that our determination to continue improving the lives of people in this country is undiminished. In today’s Queen’s Speech, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister gives us a clear mandate, which I would summarise as follows: be bold, be radical, be inclusive, be co-operative.